Customer Reviews

Mage The Free Council (Mage the Awakening)

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The Free Council book is a little more streamlined than the other order books, and makes the attempt to represent the faction in a more truthful light than normal. (Most are legendary in approach. This aims at historical.) The book describes the political and magical history and the theories that stemmed from this in reasonable detail for the entire history of the order. This includes a short description of the embarrassing truth about the Great Refusal.

Included are new rotes which cover various aspects of what the Council researched as new ways of looking at things, and also demonstrate the sorts of extremes that they went to to survive as an order.

What is in the book is well done; the only real complaints are things that were left out:

I like the legacies included. The Blank Badges are particularly interesting, but more legacies that tap various scientific paradigms would have been appreciated. Really, linguistics is the only science represented. (Surely Biology, Chemistry, and Physics deserve some attention, especially given the arcana of Life, Matter, Forces and Space.)

The book implies that rotes can be transferred electronically in a few places, but never once mentions how. ("The Mysterium" includes a Prime/Matter rote for copying Grimoires that are stored as books or scrolls. A Prime/Forces rote of similar levels should have been included, really, for electronic transfer of rotes.)

Finally, the imbued items were interesting, but neglected the requirements for creating them.

In summary, the book was worth the read, and is particularly valuable to someone wanting to run a campaign set in the twentieth century. However, it is quite short, and has some oversights.